The Shadow District

14

That evening Konrád’s sister dropped in to see him. She was single, worked in a library and lived a life of fairly unrelieved monotony. Her workplace suited her down to the ground, as books had been her greatest passion since childhood. She was something of a collector too and had built up an enviable library of her own. Elísabet, or Beta as she was affectionately known, was an old-school communist and took a dismissive attitude to most things on the grounds that they were bourgeois. There was nothing she loathed more than capitalism, a term that covered a multitude of sins in her book.

‘Is this a bad time?’ she asked, perfunctorily as always. If it was, she pretended not to notice.

‘No, come in,’ said Konrád. ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ He took out a bottle of Dead Arm.

‘No, thanks. Drinking rather a lot, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t think so. Anyway, red wine’s good for you.’

‘Good for you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Huh, don’t tell me you swallow that crap from the red-wine capitalists,’ said Beta, taking a seat in the kitchen. She noticed that her brother seemed rather distracted.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did I come at a bad time?’

‘No. Actually, I was just thinking about Dad and the seances at our flat.’

‘What on earth made you think of that?’

‘A case I’m looking into. Remember the girl who was found strangled behind the National Theatre during the war?’

‘All I remember is that Dad held that disastrous seance because of her. Why?’ she added suspiciously. ‘Was he involved in the case?’

‘No, not directly,’ said Konrád. ‘It turns out that an old man called Thorson, who came over during the war, had hung on to some cuttings about the girl’s murder, and it seems he went to see Vigga about it.’

‘Old Vigga? Is she still alive?’

‘Only just. I went to visit her, but she was pretty out of it — started rambling on about some other girl, not the one found by the theatre. You don’t remember hearing about any similar incidents, do you?’

‘No. But then it all happened before we were born. Was the other girl found in the Shadow District too?’

‘I don’t remember anyone mentioning another case when I was with the police. The question is whether it ever made it into the papers.’

‘Well, it shouldn’t be too hard to look it up.’

‘The thing is, shortly after he visited Vigga, this man — Thorson — was murdered. He seems to have been digging around for information about the dead girl by the theatre. And possibly about a second girl too, given what Vigga said. I got the impression she mistook me for Thorson. She’s a shadow of her former self, poor old thing.’

‘What was her name again? Rósamunda, wasn’t it? The girl behind the theatre?’

‘That’s right, Rósamunda. Why was he wondering about her now, seventy years later? Thorson was in his nineties. Why did he go and see Vigga? For that matter, how come he knew her in the first place and what could she have known about the case?’

‘Well, the girl was found in the neighbourhood and Vigga used to keep her ear to the ground. She lived there almost all her life.’

‘Yes, but he must have unearthed something directly connected to the case. God knows what that could have been and how he managed it.’

‘Perhaps it had been nagging at him his whole life,’ said Beta. ‘Perhaps he stumbled across some new information. Who was he?’

‘I haven’t been able to find out much about him,’ said Konrád. ‘Incidentally, Vigga said something else about the other girl. It was very hard to hear but I thought she said her bones had never been found. But I don’t know what she meant and I couldn’t get any more out of her.’

‘So some other girl must have suffered a similar fate, but her body was never found?’

‘Actually, that fits with something Dad said about the seance, though it was all a bit vague.’

‘What, that there were two girls? Rósamunda and a second girl you know nothing about?’

‘Yes, a girl who was never found,’ said Konrád. ‘Assuming there’s any point in trying to make sense of what Vigga said. I wonder if Thorson was still looking for her after all these years? Was that why he visited Vigga at the nursing home? Mind you, I’ve no idea what she was saying about the huldufólk.’

‘The huldufólk?’

‘Vigga mentioned this second girl and referred to the hidden people — the elves, presumably — in the same breath.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘I haven’t a clue. But I was wondering if it could be the same girl the medium mentioned to Dad.’

‘What are you on about?’

‘The medium said there was another girl.’

‘That was a hoax,’ said Beta angrily. ‘They were con men. You can’t believe anything that came out of those seances. When are you going to wake up? Don’t tell me you’re still trying to... Dad was an absolute shit and no doubt deserved what happened to him. He was a nasty piece of work who swindled people and harmed people and treated Mum so badly she walked out on him, thank God.’

‘Leaving me behind.’

‘She didn’t leave you behind, Konrád — he wouldn’t let you go. He split us up. That’s the kind of man he was. We’ve been over this again and again. How do you think Mum felt when she had to leave you behind? He was just using you to get back at her. He broke up the family. Mum couldn’t live with him any longer and that was his way of punishing her. That’s the kind of man he was and you’re old enough to stop defending him. Our father was a feckless creep and a scumbag.’

‘I remember what he was like,’ said Konrád. ‘There’s no need to fly off the handle. I know how he treated Mum. I know all that and I don’t need you to remind me every time we talk about him. But he wasn’t completely worthless.’

‘He was a total shit. That’s all there is to it.’

‘How can you say he deserved what happened to him? You know nothing about it. You come out with this crap but you have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘He brought it on himself,’ Beta snorted, and stood up to leave, as she did from time to time when she got really angry with Konrád. ‘He brought it on himself.’